hi, anyone care to share some advice on how you process 5d2 raws and how to get the most out of it?

So Far I've tried Canon's DPP and Lightroom 3. I did some research and see that some people claim that Lightroom 4 is an improvement on LR3. I also see positive reviews for Capture One - the only thing negative thing people cite is the price.

I probably would spend the money to get one or the other but not both. I am going to try the trial versions, but anyone care to share their insights on either program? And just in general what to do to get the best image out of raw like how much capture sharpening and where to do noise reduction (in the raw processor or Photoshop which i'm doing now).

Download some demo’s, give them a try, see what you prefer. It is somewhat personal. And if you do preview Lightroom, you’ll want to using version 4 which is significantly better at rendering than 3.X.

In answer to your question either Lr3 or Lr4 will do a fantastic job.It should be understood though that Lr3 and Lr4 have very different develop modules and so facility with Lr3 is not an automatic guarantee of competence with Lr4.Lr3 and Lr4 have brilliant algorithms for both capture sharpening and noise reduction. Output sharpening should also be done in Lr.In general nearly all editing can be done in Lr these days - reserve Photoshop for heavy duty work requiring merging, layers, image stacking etc.Lr4 allows editing of 32-bit images so merge to HDR files can be saved as 32-bit TIFFS and reimported into Lr for final editing.A big advanatage to Lr4 is the ability to do softproofing from within Lr4 that again reduces the requirement to use Photoshop especially when printing.

May I suggest buying two video tutorials from this website: "Camera to Print and Screen" and "Advanced Guide to Lightroom4 + Introduction to Lr4".Between these two tutorials the entire workflow that is required is covered.

Please feel free to ask further questions that focus more closely on any issues that you have with your workflow.

I will emphatically second Tony's advice. LR4 does a magnificent job, but it is a bear to try to learn on your own. The LuLa videos that Tony mentions are superb as well as necessary (IMHO) for understanding how to make good use of LR4.

I also see positive reviews for Capture One - the only thing negative thing people cite is the price.

Capture One Express - which is probably my primary converter (IQ is identical to Pro, it just lacks some things like local adjustments, which I can do better in Photoshop anyway) - is currently available for €41/$52/£33 until July 1.